Pain remains deep a year later for mothers of Chicago Public Schools students lost to gun violence
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A 16-year-old Chicago Public Schools student was remembered coming up on a year after he was gunned down while walking home from Nicholas Senn High School in Edgewater.
The shooting happened in broad daylight on Jan. 31, 2024, as Daveon Gibson walked along Thorndale Avenue between Lakewood and Magnolia avenues about a block and a half east of the school.
Chicago Police said a car pulled up, and several people with guns got out and started shooting. Two other Senn students, boys ages 15 and 16, were wounded.
Three other CPS students were killed within just weeks.
Monterio Williams, 17, and Robert Boston, 16, were shot and killed outside Innovations High School – right downtown in the first block of North Wabash Avenue near Washington Street – in the middle of the day on Jan. 26, 2024. Police said a car pulled up on the two teenage boys, and people got out and started shooting.
Four days before that, there was another deadly shooting outside a high school. Someone gunned down 18-year-old Maurice Clay outside CICS Loomis-Longwood on Throop Street at 95th Street in the Longwood Manor neighborhood.
A year later, some moms and families of CPS students who lost their lives to gun violence were still waiting for arrests to be made. Others, like Daveon's, know suspects are in custody — but it does not make grieving any easier.
Daveon's family knows while time has passed, it does not make coping with how the 16-year-old was gunned down steps away from Senn High School any easier.
"Kids killing kids, it's sad," said Daveon's grandmother, Sherry Wesley.
Wesley attended Daveon's vigil Wednesday night outside Trinity United Church of Christ, 1244 W. Thorndale Ave. She said it was the Edgewater community who helped Chicago Police put two teens into custody in connection with Daveon's shooting.
The teens, Kashawn Prude, then 17, and a boy who was just 14 at the time of his arrest, were charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder. Prude was charged as an adult.
"I thank the neighborhood that everybody came out and spoke out to get justice for him," Wesley said.
But such is not the case for Blondean Gartley, the mother of Monterio Williams. A year later, no one was in custody in the shooting that killed her son and Robert Boston in the Loop.
"On the outside looking it in, you know, it's like this is downtown Chicago. There's cameras everywhere," Gartley said, "so this should be as simple as rewinding the cameras."
Clay's family said no arrests had been made in his murder either.
But looking at the bigger picture, data from the Cook County Medical Examiner's office show that Chicago youth shot and killed went from 87 victims in 2023 down to 69 last year in the city.
As for Gibson's family, even though two teens are in custody, his mom, Chevonna Myles, still must relive the pain daily.
"At the end of the day, these little monsters are still alive, still can breathe and talk to their mama and daddy, and my son can't," Myles said. "My baby is in the graveyard. I've got to go to my baby's headstone and talk to him."
Gibson's family said no trial date has been set for the two teens accused in Daveon's murder.